Losing weight, finding me, healthy, easy recipes

Spicy lentil chili, college graduation!

May 28, 2013

There’s no close-up of this chili because there is no photogenic lentil chili. It all looks like sludge, no matter how fabulous it tastes. However, this recipe, adapted from Milwaukee restaurant Sauce via Gourmet magazine and thespicehouse.com, was the centerpiece of a graduation potluck picnic at Gettysburg College last weekend. Surprising people really enjoyed it, surprising people like the beloved Stoic the Vast who doesn’t like food that makes his head sweat.

You can see the slice of Cheddar under the last of Stoic's chili.

You can see the slice of Cheddar under the last of Stoic’s chili. It smooths the spiciness just a bit.

It’s the first lentil chili I’ve ever eaten that didn’t need a splash of vinegar to give it flavor. The spices, mustard, peppers and brown sugar give it a dark, complex taste. Next time — and there will be one before long — I’ll use all the chili powder and reduce the cayenne which, to my tastebuds, adds no flavor just a sledgehammer blow of heat.

Spicy Lentil Chili

4 tablespoons olive oil

 1 medium onion

1 red bell pepper, chopped

1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced

1 celery rib, chopped

1 carrot, chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

2 teaspoons (or less) salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

2 packed tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons chili powder (one-quarter or more can be chipotle powder)

1 tablespoon paprika (I used smoked)

2 teaspoons ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon cayenne (next time: 1/4 teaspoon)

2 teaspoons dried oregano

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1 teaspoon dry mustard powder

2 cups lentils, rinsed and drained

1 bay leaf

2 quarts chicken or vegetable stock (for the vegans at your table)

In 5- to 6-quart stockpot, heat oil. Stirring occasionally, cook onion, peppers, celery, carrot , garlic, salt and pepper about 6 to 8 minutes or until softened. Meanwhile, mix together brown sugar, chili powder, paprika, cumin, cayenne, oregano, thyme, and mustard. Add to vegetables in pot and cook, stirring, until very fragrant, about 4 minutes. Add lentils, stock and bay leaf. Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until lentils are very soft, about 50 to 60 minutes. Discard bay leaf before serving.

Serve with slices of sharp Cheddar, if you like. Serves 6 but can easily be doubled to serve a bunch more.

You didn't think I'd forget to show you all three of our daughters, including the graduate, did you? What a wonderful weekend!

You didn’t think I’d forget to show you all three of our daughters, including the graduate, did you? What a wonderful weekend!

Category:

Chili, Family, Potlucks, Simple foods

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Two Twinkies, jammy tomatoes

April 25, 2013
tomato jam 175

Reducing tomatoes to jam-like consistency. Chops from Brushy Creek Farms in Union Grove (NC).

One feels odd, to say the least, taking diet words of wisdom from comic Louis C.K., but in the April 25 issue of Rolling Stone, he does talk sensibly about anxiety and eating. When asked if it helped to realize that his compulsive eating was just self medicating anxiety, he answers: “Oh, definitely. Once you say that to yourself, ‘Oh, this is anxiety,’ you get to say to yourself, ‘Why am I anxious?’ because when something’s bothering you, (if) you don’t name it, you just start eating something. I’m still going to eat the two Twinkies, but when I start opening the second package, I say to myself, ‘What’s going on, buddy?’ That will get me to two Twinkies instead of eight.”

The trick is that you not say, “Shut up, bitch,” when you ask yourself what’s going on. I belong to a generation that wasn’t supposed to acknowledge we even had bodies, let alone listen to them.

But in the last year or so, I’ve tried listening. Amazing how many times sitting down with a book, going outside and planting some basil, drinking water or coffee, works just as well as junk food to soothe a stressed psyche.

Or planting tomatoes, everyone’s favorite vegetable from backyard gardens.  While we wait for nights without frost, I bought a box of grape tomatoes from faraway. This easy recipe from the April issue of Real Simple magazine justifies the non-local purchase (in my mind, anyway). The grits, of course, were (was?) my favorite part of the meal, but the tomatoes, the healthiest. And this is a good way to use a lot when your own  tomato plants overflow, say, in August.

Pork chops with cheesy grits and jammy tomatoes

1 cup quick-cooking (not instant) grits

2 ounces Cheddar (about 1/2 cup)

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

Salt and pepper

4 bone-in pork chops (1 inch thick; about 2-1/2 pounds total)**

1 teaspoon paprika

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 pint grape tomatoes, halved

1/4 cup cider vinegar

3 tablespoons brown sugar

1 tablespoon chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

**I used thinner chops from a local farmer and adjusted cooking time accordingly.

Cook grits according to package directions, stirring in the cheese, butter and 1/4 teaspoon each salt and pepper during last minute of cooking.Meanwhile season pork with paprika, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Heat oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook the pork until browned and cooked through, 6 to 8 minutes per side; remove and set aside to rest.

Add tomatoes, vinegar and sugar to drippings in skillet and cook, stirring often, until the tomatoes are soft and the liquid is syrupy, 3 to 4 minutes. Serve pork with tomatoes and grits. Sprinkle with parsley. Makes 4 servings, 645 calories (that’s with 10 ounces pork and bone each), 26 g fat. Because I cooked only 2 servings of pork and tomatoes, I was able to have leftover grits for breakfast several mornings. Yum.

Category:

Compulsive eating, Emo eating, Meat, Simple foods, Spring, Tomatoes

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Addiction, the sequel (again!); stir-fry problem solvers

April 13, 2013

A friend’s child went into drug rehab this week. And the way my friend describes the drug use is exactly my thought process when I’m getting ready to medicate my low moods with over-eating:

“S/he was only using a few times a week. S/he’d use, feel good. It would wear off. S/he’d get sick (feel bad) and think, ‘Just this once, it won’t matter if I use again.’  ” And again. And again. We junkies know how that goes just in case you thought being addicted to food is any different than being addicted to other substances providing instant highs, subsequent lows.

OK, it’s not against the law to finish the ice cream in the container when a half serving remains. But the sugar makes me feel lousy in the short run, the fat, in the long run. A significant portion of my difficulties running up and down stairs, after all, is the 40 extra pounds packed about my mid-section.

So, alone in the house last night (well, if two not particularly housebroken dogs, a rambunctious kitten and two pissed-off cats count as alone), I had this chat with myself: “Yes, it will too matter. Go to bed. Feel good about your strengths, instead of bad about your weaknesses. Think about your supper and how in most of the world, that was probably a day’s worth of food.” And I did. Yay, me.

And that supper was so good, we polished it off in two days, with me forgetting to take a picture. It was a gingered Cashew Chicken from the January/February issue of Cuisine at Home magazine, a recipe that answered two of my frequent quibbles about stir-fries: 1) They all taste the same and 2) the meat is overdone to a fare-thee-well. Remedies: 1) Toasted sesame oil, fresh ginger and chili garlic sauce and 2) pre-cooking the chicken.

Cashew chicken

1-1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch cubes

1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil

3/4 cup roasted cashews

1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger

1/3 cup low-sodium soy sauce

1 tablespoon chili garlic sauce

1 cup scallion slices (green part)

Find chili garlic sauce in Asian foods section of your supermarket. Use it in recipes or splashed on jasmine rice like ketchup on a burger.

As with any stir-fry, have all ingredients ready to pop in the pan before you fire up the stovetop. Cook chicken in saucepan of boiled salted water until cooked through, 4 to 5 minutes; drain and refrigerate tightly covered,  if not using immediately.

Heat oil in wok or skillet. Add cashews; stir-fry until fragrant, 1 minute. Add ginger and stir-fry 30 seconds. Stir in soy sauce and chili garlic sauce, then add cooked chicken; stir-fry 2 minutes more. Stir in scallions. Serve over rice.

Makes 4 servings, 381 cal and 20 g fat each.

Category:

Chinese food, Emo eating, Food addiction, Simple foods, Weight loss

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Kitchen Roselli, 131 Main and Greek couscous salad

April 9, 2013

Something in the Thai Steak Salad dressing at 131 Main in Cornelius (NC) tugged at the corners of my palate. Something familiar but unusual in an entrée salad. A blast of  summery green not usually keeping company with butter-tender bits of filet mignon. They added fresh mint to amp up the beef, mango, noodles and green onions. Good thing I’d started with the wild mushroom-artichoke soup because the Thai flavorings would have blown that mild-mannered soup out of the water, taste-wise.

Three days after that Stoic the Vast and I made our winding way to Kitchen Roselli in East Bend (NC), another taste treat from start to finish. I know it was really good because Stoic didn’t go ballistic over the bill. The service was lovely, it was the best antipasto I’ve ever eaten (good cheeses and salami are key), they make their own bread, pasta and desserts. Stoic had a gargantuan cream puff drenched in dark chocolate and I (virtuous smirk) had lemon sorbet. Of course, I also drank about half the bottle of Sicilian wine that tasted like Michael Corleone’s bee-buzzing honeymoon  looked (but without the nasty explosions).

Easy to put together, this couscous salad makes 10 servings -- enough for several lunchboxes.

Easy to put together, this couscous salad makes 10 servings — enough for several lunchboxes.

Then Monday we finally had a sunny spring day and I felt like cooking, not just like eating (a key difference). I tried the Greek Couscous with Olives from a recent American Profile newspaper supplement, and both I and Stoic were enthusiastic. The thread here is fresh herbs — mint in the Thai salad, basil in the penne with vodka sauce and rosemary on Kitchen Roselli’s focaccia and mint in this salad.

A tiny piece of Krusteaz’s honey cornbread, a dish of applesauce and the last of the Villa Pozzi Nero d’Avola made a terrific supper. I’m struggling to keep myself on the diet wagon, and with food and drink like this, I feel as though I’ve eaten something, not just anything. I’d suggest tasting your red onion before adding it. If it’s got as much of a whammy as ours did, you might want to soak it in ice water for an hour or so before combining with other ingredients. Either that or chop it into pieces big enough to pick out!

Shirley Herb from Northumberland (PA), about 25 minutes from where I grew up, submitted this good recipe to American Profile. Take it to picnics this summer because it’s good, it’s different and it has no easily perishable ingredients.

Greek couscous with olives

1-1/4 cups water

1 cup couscous (whole wheat if you like)

1 medium red bell pepper, seeded and diced

1/2 cup chopped red onion

6 ounces marinated artichoke hearts, drained and quartered

1 cup ripe olives, minced

3 ounces feta cheese, crumbled

1/3 cup fresh mint leaves, shredded

2 large garlic cloves, minced

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1 generous pinch salt

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (I used slightly less)

1/2 cup good-quality olive oil (make sure, because this is what you’ll taste)

Romaine lettuce

Tomato wedges

3 tablespoons toasted pine nuts**

Bring water to boil. Pour over couscous in heat-resistant pan or bowl. Cover, remove from heat and let stand 5 minutes.

Add bell pepper, onion, artichokes, olives and cheese to couscous and toss.

In glass jar with lid combine mint, garlic, pepper, salt, lemon juice and olive oil. Shake well to blend.

Pour dressing over couscous mixture and stir to combine. Refrigerate, covered, until chilled.

To serve, line salad bowl or individual salad servers with Romaine leaves. Garnish couscous mixture with tomato and sprinkle with pine nuts. Serves 10 at 250 calories, 17 g fat each.

** I like to say I’m not a Wal-Mart fan, but their pine nuts cost a fraction of  others’ prices. Also, have you tried their Cara Cara oranges? Seedless and the taste is somewhere between that of a naval orange and, a blood orange.

Category:

Couscous, good food, healthy cooking, Olive oil, Salad, Simple foods, Spring, Tomatoes

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New year, new me, blah, blah, Brussels sprouts

January 21, 2013

Time to get re-revved. I’ve rejoined the YMCA after 6 years away. I can walk on the treadmill, do weight circuits, take water aerobics, spin and zumba classes, swim laps. If only it weren’t so much easier to lie in the recliner, read novels (ooh, like Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior) and eat leftover Christmas candy!

birthdays 030

Birthday girl and fairy godmother.

Christmas around here really isn’t over until our middle daughter’s Groundhog Day birthday. Between Christmas and then we have 3 others — Vlad the Plaid’s, Dora the Explorer’s and middle daughter’s daughter’s — so it seems like a six-week present spree. With presents, of course, come cake and ice cream.

Actually, the best birthday meal we’ve had in forever was Dora’s fairy godmother’s birthday supper for her and Vlad at New Town Bistro in Winston-Salem. This is a modestly priced, pleasant little place our dentist recommended (!) as his and his wife’s go-to restaurant.  The food is consistently good and imaginative (although we still can’t figure out why the apple-chicken sausage with Vlad’s pork tenderloin), and the menu changes just enough to give it an atmosphere of adventure. The desserts are OK, but the emphasis is on meats and fish and vegetables. The basil-sprinkled sweet corn,  thumb-fat stalks of roasted asparagus, tender spring-green slices of fried squash, sautéed mushrooms with the sweet tang of red wine, Brussels sprouts with walnuts.

Now my daughters and I belong to a small but loyal cadre of Brussels sprouts fans. We’ve loved them since before they were trendy, since my mother cooked them only until tender-crunchy and served them only with a dab of mustard and a squirt of lemon juice.

Love sprouts but not cilantro which is in original Food Network recipe. I omitted.

Love sprouts but not cilantro which is in original Food Network recipe. I omitted. Photo: Christopher Testani.

Even before New Town, He Who Does Not Like B.S.  brought in a bag of baby sprouts from his winter garden. They were a pretty jade and closed as tightly as a sleeping newborn’s fists. I X’d their tender stems, sliced them in half and soaked them in salt water to discourage hitchhiking insects, patted them dry and oven-roasted them, using this Food Network magazine recipe. Even He said they were “interesting.”

Roasted garlic Brussels sprouts

Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a small skillet over medium heat; add 2 chopped garlic cloves and 1/2 teaspoon each cumin seeds and kosher salt and cook 2 minutes or until fragrant. Stir in 1 tablespoon brown sugar, the juice of 1/2 lemon and a pinch of red pepper flakes. Toss with 1-1/4 pounds halved Brussels sprouts on a baking sheet. Roast at 450 ° until tender, 18 to 24 minutes. Toss every few minutes but not so often you don’t get the little crispy bits which are the best part of this dish.

I can’t tell you how many servings this makes because 3 of us polished it off with seconds. We like our sprouts!

Category:

Brussels sprouts, healthy cooking, Holiday eating, Olive oil, Roasting vegetables, Rural life, vegetables

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The Remains of the (Birth)day

January 17, 2013
The very last of Mamaw's pound cake and the three-layer fig cake.

The very last of Mamaw’s pound cake and the three-layer fig cake.

“My mother likes to use recipes,” said our youngest daughter to her friend in a tone that implied I abuse kittens. Both of these young women are the kind of intuitive cooks that fix what’s in the cupboard. Me, not so much. I’ve never been an improviser — at the piano, on stage or in the kitchen.

My cooking talent, if I have one, is the ability to intuit what a recipe will taste like. The Spicy Mango Sweet Potato Chicken, for instance, I made a few days ago did not need the called-for 3 tablespoons of hot sauce. I didn’t have to make it as written to figure that out (I used 1 teaspoon and it was just right.)

That, of course, is especially true of baking, made more difficult around here by the fact that our 23-year-old gas oven will not hold a constant temperature. Baking, so goes the cliche, is a science while cooking is an art. In our kitchen, you bake on a wing and a prayer.

This beloved child and my husband, Vlad the Plaid, share a January 20th birthday so when she came home this week, I made a cake for each. He wanted our neighbor’s dried figs ground into a fig-orange and almond layer cake filling. This extravaganza included cooked icing  more like divinity than frosting.

The Hamster, who will be 22 on Sunday, got Jean Easter’s Mamaw’s Poundcake, second prize-winner from a 2006 contest in the Winston-Salem Journal. It is a practically perfect poundcake, crispy on the outside and tender but dense inside. Coconut, butter, vanilla and lemon extracts give it a distinct, sweet taste that is a combination of all 4 but somehow different. The Hamster’s buddy said it smelled like popcorn because of the butter flavoring, but if it had been a wine, we’d say it had “notes” of the other three as well.

The only changes I made were the substitution of real butter for margarine and cake flour for all-purpose. The crumb was fine, moist and even.

Mamaw’s poundcake

3 sticks (1-1/2 cups) butter, softened

1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened

3 cups sugar

6 large eggs

1-1/2 teaspoons each coconut, butter, vanilla and lemon extracts

3 cups cake flour (maybe you’re lucky enough to have access to King Arthur’s)

1 teaspoon baking powder

Dash of salt

Heat oven to 325°. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan.  (I usually spend about 10 minutes doing a thorough job of this.)

Cream butter, cream cheese and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. (The air you beat into this mixture is most of the leavening in a poundcake.) Add extracts; beat until mixture is lemon-colored and smooth.

In separate bowl mix together flour, baking powder and salt. Gradually add this flour mixture to creamed mixture, one-quarter at a time. Turn off mixer before mixing completely and finish by hand. (The more you mix flour into cake batter, the tougher the cake.)

Spoon batter into prepared pan and bake 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 hours, turning pan at midway point to prevent a “sorry streak” (undone places). Cake is done when tester inserted into thickest part comes out clean, top is golden and beginning to crack. Cool on wire rack in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out to cool completely. Makes 20 to 24 very, very rich slices of several thousand calories apiece.

Category:

Baking, Butter, Cake, Desserts, Holiday baking, Recipes

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Full moon setting; rosemary mashed sweet potatoes with caramelized shallots

November 28, 2012

Florida-grapefruit yellow moon dropping to the horizon outside study windows this morning, something I’d miss if I could sleep past 4 a.m. The last of the moonlight makes luminous the mist exhaled by the sleeping pastures, and I wonder, again, how I can leave this extraordinary beauty for a more prosaic site with more people,  more life.

Because I drove more than 150 miles yesterday for lunch with a cousin I hadn’t seen in 44 years, my glamorous second-cousin Amy with her mother’s smokey eyes and voice.  Amy’s dad and my mother were first cousins in the more-or-less gothic Lawrence clan. Not that they wore black eyeliner and tattoos, but each of the four children of Amy’s and my great-grandparents seemed to suffer blows beyond the usual twists in life’s journeys. Which doesn’t mean they weren’t beautiful and privileged — they were, all of them. 

So it was extraordinary to sit for several hours with someone who has her own take on our shared family dramas, who remembers me half a century ago, someone who was there when the elderly siblings dove into their Manhattans before every family celebration, someone who also beheld our formidable great-grandmother swathed in black and swirling snowflakes before the annual Christmas Eve blow-out. The Cheever biography I’m reading disparages autobiography-as-novel, but I think my mother’s family was the ultimate, hair-raising novel.

That’s my beautiful cousin on the right who looks WAAAAY more than 6 years younger!

But if they didn’t do well at emotional expression, they excelled in the kitchen. Thus, as their true descendant (even if I do look like her despised mother-in-law as my mother said all the time), I would rather cook and eat than say something meaningful to someone else or, for that matter, see long-”lost” relatives. Which is why I need to live where there are someones, particularly those who walk and hit the Y (which is what I’m going to do instead of joining Weight Watchers — I have to feel good enough to work out which is only going to happen with some water exercise classes).

My FB friend Peg R. has an interesting proposal, that all of us struggling with food/weight issues commit to being 3 pounds lighter by Jan. 1. (She’s also suggesting each of us be able to do as many pushups by then as we are years old, but that’s not going to happen.) A  manageable goal that should, nevertheless, make us feel that we’re constructively dealing with  the stressful holidays.

By way of a positive beginning, I gained nothing over Thanksgiving. It was more important to do things other than eating and, when eating, to choose the healthy foods. The following Nov. 2010 Cooking Light recipe is my go-to sweet potato casserole for the foreseeable future. Farewell marshmallows and gobs of butter; hello, crisply caramelized and lightly sugared shallots.

Rosemary mashed sweet potatoes with shallots

2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons good-quality olive oil, divided

3/4 cup thinly sliced shallots (about 2 large)

2 teaspoons brown sugar

2 pounds sweet potatoes, roasted and peeled

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh rosemary leaves

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

Heat 2 tablespoons oil in skillet over low heat. Add shallots and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Sprinkle with sugar; cook 20 minutes or until shallots are golden, stirring occasionally.

Nothing but healthy food and drink as far as the eye can see.

Put sweet potatoes through ricer. Add rosemary, salt and pepper, whisk until blended. Spoon into serving bowl; top with shallots and drizzle with remaining 2 teaspoons oil. Makes 6 servings of 202 calories, 6.3 fat grams each.

Category:

healthy cooking, Holiday cooking, Holiday eating, Importance of others to recovering addict, Weight loss, Why overweight?

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